One of the beautiful things about an evolutionary explanation is that you really just have to show the propagation and selection mechanisms, and the “magic” fine tuning will automatically follow. But it’s less compelling if you have to run that logic backwards (it’s fine tuned so it must have evolved).
That said, I don't think the evolutionary explanation is hand-waved into play at all. I see your point about how it's a reverse approach to how biological natural selection was discovered, but I don't think that decreases its merit in any way, either. Smolin especially takes a deep look at the star formation process, how galaxies work, the structure we see in the cosmic web (and that was 1997!) and makes the comparison to biological organisms in so much as they're dynamic, homeostatic, out-of-equilibrium systems that seem fine tuned to carry out a process of increasing complexification. This, combined with the understanding (just jump on board for the story, you can get off after if you don't like it) that universes reproduce through black holes/big bangs and the similarities are, I think, compelling.
I'm not saying this is 100% definitely the truth and everyone should abandon CDM and string theory. I just think it's a compelling idea that deserves to be considered and discussed honestly, or perhaps even earnestly.
The only thing I'm complaining about is that if you want to explain the apparent fine-tuning of the parameters of physics, you have to explain what that varation/reproduction process is. Which is the "reproduce through black holes/big bangs thing". That part has to be more than a "story" if you're trying to have an evolutionary theory of universes.
Smolin, a student of Wheeler's, took the idea and understood that the changes would have to be subtle instead of completely random. Within enough generations, more successfully reproducing universes would outnumber those that weren't exponentially, and assuming that we're a typical universe, our constants will be found to be tuned to produce black holes almost as efficiently as possible. His work is absolutely a real theory, is published, offers predictions, and is falsifiable. It's worth checking out, honestly, even if you just want to read about Einstein and Leibniz and all those guys for 300 pages or so.
Gough continues even further, suggesting SMBHs would have to be a trait found in the earliest universes even before they could form stars, which suggests that our universe should have extremely early forming SMBH and that these essentially create the structure we see in the universe. And so far it's looking like he's right. And if we determine concretely that SMBH form via direct-collapse in the early universe, I don't get how we don't just have to start over with a new model of cosmology.
Lastly, and I know this crowd hasn't really been down for natural philosophy sans-math, if black holes are the first thing to form in our universe and, based on what we know about them, they'll be the last thing around, too... Doesn't that make them seem pretty important to the function the universe seems to be performing?
And honestly, just think about how many questions it would answer. Is the universe infinite or finite? Well, it's finite but so massive and expanding at the speed of light so it might as well be? Well if it's finite, what's outside it? The parent universe! But you can't get out there, because the white hole that formed the Einstein-Rosen bridge connecting our spacetimes collapsed immediately. Well why are the constants these values in our universe? Because those values are REALLY good at making black holes so it's super trendy for universes to be more or less those numbers.
(I know I'm oversimplifying to anxiety-inducing levels and quite likely misappropriating terminology I should leave alone, but I'm just trying to illustrate possibilities. Thanks for reading!)
Observation also reveals startling levels of complexity wherever we look, even in the early universe where our standard model didn't predict it.
The only mechanism we know of that creates Intelligent Design-flavored complexity is natural selection. Black holes and the Big Bang already suggest physics we don't fully understand, but the evidence is compelling that they're the same phenomenon viewed from opposite sides.
CNS gives you a theory that provides both explanatory and predictive power within this framework, and (in my opinion) offers alternative explanations for many of our other cosmological mysteries like dark matter and dark energy. You can just take the direct-collapse SMBH portion if you want to and leave the rest on the table, but I feel that in doing so you're neutering what makes this theory so compelling: how (potentially) easily it can explain a wide range of observed phenomena.